Canada's Northern Vision

Canada’s Northern Vision

Terry Fenge Ottawa-based consultant

In mid-December 2004 Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin joined the three territorial First Ministers Joseph Handley (Northwest Territories), Dennis Fentie (Yukon), and Paul Okalik (Nunavut) to announce their shared intent to develop a wide-ranging Northern Strategy. Scheduled to be released in spring 2005 the strategy was still incomplete when the ruling Liberal government was defeated in 23 January 2006 federal election which brought Stephen Harper’s Conservatives to power. Surprisingly, the Arctic featured prominently in the election campaign as a result of the 9 January 2006 release by the President of the United States of a National Security and Homeland Security directive dealing with the Arctic which reiterated a long-standing American position that the Northwest Passage “is a strait used for inter- national navigation”. In response, Prime Minister designate Harper firmly outlined Canada’s view that the Northwest Passage is its “internal waters” over which Canada enjoys full ownership, jurisdiction and control. Canada and the USA have jockeyed over the legal status of the passage since the late 1960s when Humble Oil, a US corporation, sent the supertanker Manhattan to test the passage without seeking Canada’s permission. Since the 2006 federal election, asserting Arctic sovereignty has been a constant theme of the Government of Canada. Prime Minister Harper has made a point of visiting the Canadian Arctic every summer and his government has announced various initiatives to strengthen Canada’s Arctic sovereignty claim, including bolstering the ability of the Canadian armed forces to operate in the region. The 2007 Speech from the Throne – the means used by the Government of Canada to signal its legislative and policy pri- orities – addressed Arctic sovereignty and related northern issues in some detail, promising an integrated Northern Strategy. Many of the proposed Arctic sovereignty-related initiatives were reprised in the 2010 Speech from the Throne. The Government of Canada revealed its Northern Strategy in summer 2009. Focusing on social and economic development, environmental 720 Terry Fenge

protection and devolution to the territorial governments of provincial-type responsibilities exercised by the Government of Canada, as well as Arctic sovereignty, this strategy also gave a prominent place, but with no details, to circumpolar affairs. In 2010 the ministers of Foreign Affairs, and Indian Affairs and Northern Development, released a formal Arctic Foreign Policy statement that stressed projection of the goals and objective of the Northern Strategy in the circumpolar world. The Northern Strategy outlines the Government of Canada’s “vision for the North”:

• self-reliant individuals live in healthy, vital communities, manage their own affairs and shape their own destinies; • the Northern tradition of respect for the land and the environment is par- amount, and the principles of responsible and sustainable development anchor all decision-making and action; • strong, responsible, accountable governments work together for a vibrant, prosperous future for all – a place whose peoples and governments are significant contributing partners to a dynamic, secure Canadian federa- tion; and • we patrol and protect our territory through enhanced presence on the land, in the sea and over the skies of the Arctic.

At face value there seems little in this vision statement with which to take issue and much to support. The reaction of national and regional newspa- pers, all based in provincial capitals in southern Canada, was uniformly warm and welcoming. A more critical appraisal is likely, however, if the statement is viewed from a northern perspective rather than that of the national or provincial capitals. That the vision is “for” the North not “by” or “with” the North reveals that it was developed in Ottawa by federal agencies with little or, more likely, no engagement by the territorial governments, northern Indigenous peoples or other northern interests, a curious way of pro- ceeding in light of the strategy’s call for governments to work together in partnership. The territorial North is fundamentally different from the provincial South largely because Indigenous peoples – Inuit, First Nations and Metis – are in the majority (Nunavut) or a sizeable minority elsewhere. Outside the main urban centers of Yellowknife and Whitehorse and, to a lesser extent Inu- vik, northern Canada is aboriginal and rural in outlook, language, rhythm and cadence. Moreover, northern Indigenous peoples have in the last thirty years negotiated far-reaching land claims and self-government agreements with the Government of Canada that reflect this cultural, social, constitu- tional and political reality. All northerners, and all Canadians for that matter,